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For couples who end up needing In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) in order to conceive, learning about the process can be overwhelming. There are preparations, medications, costs, injections, tests to learn about - a whole new world of procedural aspects and terminology you probably wouldn't have otherwise known about. For many couples, one component of their IVF plan-of-attack they may need to familiarize themselves with is ICSI.

ICSI (short for intracytoplasmic sperm injection) is a fertilization technique that was developed more than twenty years ago, to best bypass certain issues with sperm and/or fertilization during an IVF cycle.

Researchers in California hope to become the first in the world to build an artificial testicle that produces human sperm. Such a device could allow infertile men to conceive children. While recent studies have shown it's possible to treat infertile male mice by producing sperm using stem cells from the mouse, the same has not been done for humans, said researcher Dr. Paul Turek, director of the Turek Clinic, a men's health medical practice in San Francisco.

Scientists have made a major breakthrough that could soon see human sperm grown in the laboratory. Researchers in Germany and Israel were able to grow mouse sperm from a few cells in a laboratory dish, and the development opens up the possibility of infertile men being able to father their own children rather than using donor sperm.

Researchers report that they've grown mouse sperm from testicular tissue in the laboratory, a development that could advance the field of infertility in human males. In the study, published in Nature, the researchers took tissue from the testes of baby mice and coaxed it into producing sperm cells. They then inseminated female mice, which had healthy babies.

Stephen Bollinger, an executive in residence at the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, is launching his own company in addition to working with more than a dozen other life sciences start-ups at the Greenhouse.

Infertile couples are to be offered a controversial embryo quality test that could double their chances of starting a family.

At least 90 women are to be recruited by a clinic in London to take part in the study, which promises to settle a heated medical dispute about the test’s capacity to help IVF patients.

Preliminary research in the US has suggested that the procedure, which aims to identify embryos with the best chance of developing into healthy babies, can deliver IVF success rates as high as 80 per cent — more than double the average in Britain.